There’s a song we think you need to hear.
It’s not trending. It’s not sponsored. It doesn’t have a hook designed by a PR team in a mood board meeting next to a juice bar.
But it hits harder than anything we’ve heard this year.
It’s called “It Isn’t Nice,” and it was written by Malvina Reynolds, a woman who looked like a literature professor but wrote like she had nothing left to lose — because she didn’t. She had seen too much already.
“It isn’t nice to block the doorway,
It isn’t nice to go to jail,
There are nicer ways to do it —
But the nice ways always fail.”
She wrote that for the Civil Rights Movement in 1964.
But if she wrote it today, we’d swear she was subtweeting Donald Trump and everyone clutching pearls while the Constitution burns.
WHO WAS MALVINA REYNOLDS?
A late-blooming, doctorate-holding, banjo-strumming wrecking ball. Born in 1900. Wrote protest songs in her 60s.
Took no shit. Gave no apologies.
She gave us “Little Boxes” — a mockery of middle-class conformity.
She gave us “Magic Penny” — a deceptively sweet song about love, still sung by schoolkids who have no idea they’re absorbing radical politics through melody.
But her song “It Isn’t Nice” is pure fire. Not metaphorical fire. Actual, shake-the-windows, call-the-cops kind of fire.
WHY THIS SONG STILL MATTERS
Because here we are — 61 years later — under the rule of the Trump 2.0, watching our democracy get molested by a cockwomble wearing a red tie.
We’re told to stay calm.
We’re told to wait.
We’re told to be “nice.”
And Malvina?
She’s there in the collective memory, rolling her eyes and passing us the goddamn lyrics sheet.
“It isn’t nice to carry banners
Or sit down in the street,
It isn’t nice to shake old systems up —
It isn’t nice — but it’s the heat.”
This isn’t a song. It’s a manual.
It’s a call to action sung sweetly enough to sneak past censors and punch through spine.
It’s the anthem of everyone who’s tired of asking permission to be free.
WE’RE NOT BEING NICE THIS SUMMER
We’re planning civil disobedience.
Not because we’re anarchists.
Not because we want chaos.
But because order without justice isn’t order — it’s control.
They’re locking up human beings in cages.
They’re stripping people of their rights.
They’re feeding us fascism with a side of fries.
And they expect us to wait in line and clap politely.
So no. It isn’t nice.
But neither is what’s happening.
And when they come for us with handcuffs and headlines, we’ll sing back.
“There are nicer ways to do it —
But the nice ways always fail.”
LISTEN TO THE SONG THAT STILL TERRIFIES AUTHORITARIANS
Malvina Reynolds – “It Isn’t Nice”
Sing it. Share it. Learn it.
Because we’re not being polite while the country falls apart.
And because Malvina’s not here to say it herself — but her song still is.
Because freedom is not about being nice. It is about being unignorable.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.